Results from a new type of stationary microfocusing sealed tube X‐ray source will be presented here. Measurements obtained with the new low maintenance, high brilliance microfocus source IμS™ equipped with different 2‐dimensional beam shaping multilayer optics are shown. A comparison of the IμS source with typical sealed tube fine focus systems shows data of outstanding quality achieved in diffractometry applications using a 2‐dimensional detector. A large improvement in intensity (by a factor of about 16) was observed. Very promising results were achieved when measuring powders in transmission geometry using the IμS. With this way of focusing on the detector, better crystallite statistics and better resolution were provided. Intensity gain factors in the range of 100 were possible with some applications. For small angle scattering a factor of five was observed when using an IμS with optics for a parallel beam in comparison to a typical sealed tube instrument.

Monte Carlo treatmentVarious parameters of a neutron powder diffractometer can be varied to increase the flux at the sample.Additionally or alternatively the detector area can be increased to yield a higher count rate.The increased intensity comes on the cost of resolution and precision of

Nowadays, X-ray optical components, such as multilayer mirrors or scatterless apertures, are used as beam conditioning devices in nearly all state-of-the-art X-ray analytical equipment, either in the home lab or at synchrotron beamlines.Scatterless apertures, such as scatterfree pinholes, are usually made of oriented single crystals, such as Ge or Ta, and show a significant reduction of parasitic scattering commonly associated with conventional metal apertures.Therefore, such pinholes allow an improvement of X-ray analytical instruments as the number of necessary pinholes can be reduced.Further, the use of scatterfree pinholes enables a significant reduction of the background.This improves the data quality at low resolution which is beneficial for small angle scattering, as well as for crystallography applications.Our SCATEX pinholes are either made of Germanium for energies below 11.2 keV or of Tantalum for energies above 11.2 keV and are available with diameters ranging from 2 mm down to 20 µm and below.Therefore, these novel apertures are applicable to a wide range of different applications.We will be showing new results about development and use of these pinholes.Multilayer X-ray mirrors are widely used as monochromators and beam shaping devices in protein and small molecule crystallography, as well as in powder diffraction and small angle scattering.The so-called Montel optics consist of bent substrates with shape tolerances below 100 nm, upon which multilayers are deposited with single layer thicknesses in the nanometer range and up to several hundreds of layer pairs.The multilayers are designed with lateral thickness gradients within ± 1% deviation of the ideal shape.Very low shape tolerances below 100 nm and figure errors well below 5 arcsec are required for multilayer mirrors to ensure a superb flux density of more than 4x10^11 photons/s/mm^2 in combination with very high-brightness microfocus X-ray sources, such as the novel liquid metal jet X-ray source.Montel Optics are nowadays not only used in the home-lab, but also at synchrotron beamlines.We will be showing results of a combination of microfocus sources with these multilayer optics.

Multilayer X-ray optics with single layers of a few nanometers thickness can be obtained nowadays. These optics are used in X-ray diffractometers (XRD), X-ray fluorescence spectrometers (XRF) and at synchrotron sources. A detailed description of the production of multilayer X-ray optics using sputter deposition methods is presented and the simulation of X-ray optics and characterization with X-ray analytical measurements are explained. Finally, the advantages of multilayer X-ray optics in typical X-ray analytical applications are summarized.

The idea of using multi-plate crystals to confine incident hard Xrays in a closed loop by means of multiple reflection was proposed more than thirty years ago.The simplest two-crystal plate cavity has been mostly investigated theoretically based on the dynamical theory of X-ray diffraction.A variety of experiments in realizing x-ray cavity resonance have also been proposed and attempted.With the advent of synchrotron radiation, high resolution and time resolved experiments for this purpose has recently been conducted and experimental attempts to observe cavity resonance fringes have been pursued.Her we report the direct observation of resonance fringes inside the energy gap and the total-reflection range of the (12 4 0) back reflection from monolithic two silicon crystal plates of 25-150um thick and a 40-150 um gap using synchrotron radiation of energy resolution Delta E=0.36 meV at 14.4388 keV.This cavity resonance results from the coherent interaction between the X-ray wavefields generated by the two plates with a gap smaller than the X-ray coherence length.This finding may open up new opportunities for high-resolution and phase-contrast X-ray studies, and lead to new developments in X-ray optics.

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We present recent developments in the production of X-ray multilayer optics for Cu Kalpha laboratory single 4 crystal diffraction equipment for protein crystallography and structural proteomics. The paper shows design, simulations and properties of Montel optics comprised of two elliptically bent focusing multilayers, optimized for the use with modern rotating anode X-ray generators. The multilayers are sputter deposited with a graded d-spacing along the length of the substrate.The various beam properties such as flux density and divergence are investigated in detail. After optimization of the optic for a state-of-the-art rotating anode x-ray generator, we obtain a flux density of 1 x 10(10) photons/s/mm(2). Results for a typical protein structure will be shown, illustrating the advantage of Montel optics in the field of single-crystal diffraction and protein crystallography for life sciences.

We present an optic for laboratory Mo-Kalpha single crystal diffraction systems. The optic is comprised of two elliptically bent focusing multilayers, which are arranged in the Montel scheme. The paper shows the design and performance of the optic. A comparison with a graphite monochromator shows a five-fold intensity enhancement. Especially small and weakly diffracting crystals benefit from the large intensity produced by the optic, as illustrated by diffraction analyses.

In this paper we review various improvements that we made in the development of multilayer mirror optics for home-lab x-ray analytical equipment in recent years. For the detection of light elements using x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, we developed a number of new multilayers with improved detection limits. In detail, we found that La/B4C multilayers improve the detection limit of boron by 29 % compared to the previous Mo/B4C multilayers. For the detection of carbon, TiO2/C multilayers improve the detection limit also by 29 % compared to the V/C multilayers previously used. For the detection of aluminum, WSi2/Si or Ta/Si multilayers can lead to detection limit improvements over the current W/Si multilayers of up to 60 % for samples on silicon wafers. For the use as beam-conditioning elements in x-ray diffractometry, curved optics coated with laterally d-spacing graded multilayers give rise to major improvements concerning usable x-ray intensity and beam quality. Recent developments lead to a high quality of these multilayer optics concerning beam intensity, divergence, beam uniformity and spectral purity. For example, x-ray reflectometry instruments equipped with such multilayer optics have dynamic ranges previously only available at synchrotron sources. Two-dimensional focusing multilayer optics are shown to become essential optical elements in protein crystallography and structural proteomics.

During the last years the instrumentation for X-ray metrology has improved remarkably. There are numerous new solutions for all components such as sources, optics and detectors. We will present a new development of X-ray sources which we deliver in custom- built modules: the IµSTM - Incoatec Microfocus Source. The IµSTM is a high- brilliance X-ray source incorporating a 30 W microfocus sealed tube together with an high-performance graded multilayer X-ray optics, named "Quazar". The brilliance of IµSTM is comparable to that of a traditional rotating anode system running at 4.0 to 5.4 kW. In addition to that, IµSTM offers numerous benefits, such as no moving parts, a long lifetime without maintenance, and air-cooling. It can be integrated into all common X-ray analytical systems and is available for Cu or Mo radiation. The new Quazar optics deliver parallel or focused beams with different customized flux densities, divergencies and spot sizes. With IµSTM, data quality and ease of operation are immensely improved in X-ray analytical applications, such as biological and chemical crystallography, microdiffraction, and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS).